Wizard Heights - Book 1 - The Legend of the Sorcerer King Read online

  Wizard Heights: Book One—The Legend of the Sorcerer King.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, incidents, and places are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

  © 2011 Alexander Scott. All rights reserved.

  Cover Illustration ©2013 Alexander Scott.

  Visit http://www.wizardheights.com to learn more about this book and its author.

  Wizard Heights is on Twitter: @WizardHeights

  Summary: A boy discovers a magical Victorian city.

  For ages 11 and up.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  The Inquisition

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  More by Alexander Scott

  More by Alexander Scott

  More by Alexander Scott

  Prologue

  Zeppelins hovered high above the Valley of the Kings. Far beneath them, hundreds of Egyptian men in galabiyas and turbans came and went from a pass deep amongst the mountains. For eight long months they had toiled, carrying rocks and sand, loading scree-filled sacks upon the backs of camels and mules, while above them the sun, merciless as the desert asp, beat upon their backs.

  Then one day a cry went up from the mountain pass—the object of their toil had at last been discovered. Man-by-man, a hastily scrawled message was passed down the narrow ravine from the excavation site, until finally, having reached the end of the human chain, it was delivered into the waiting hands of an Arabian chauffeur. Cradling the message carefully, he climbed into a beetle black motorcar and drove across the desert as if he had the devil on his tail.

  Upon a desert plain half a mile away, beneath a cluster of tent pavilions sat a large gathering of European and American business executives and aristocracy; refined socialites, the women, dressed in silks and ruffles had extravagant, wide-brimmed hats, while the men wore pinstripes and trilbies. They sat about exchanging polite conversation, some of the men smoking cigars, others drinking brandy, playing Poker, and discussing stocks and bonds, the price of derivatives, and the flotation of stock on overseas markets.

  Until that is, a plume of smoke went up across the desert plain. It started like a small sand genie but soon grew to a tempest. It was the beetle-black motorcar that was owned by the archaeological expedition of which the aristocrats and business people in question were paymasters. It tore along the desert road with its headlights blazing as if it had the vengeful spirit of Tuthankhamen himself upon its tail.

  Egyptian servants ran to the vehicle with knives drawn, but their concern was soon allayed. The motorcar drew up before the pavilions in a welter of sand and pebbles, sending half of the desert dust before it. Out of this dust emerged the Arabian chauffeur. He ran toward them with arms raised. “Come quickly!” he implored. “At last it has been found!”

  At this, a cry of jubilation went up from those assembled in the shade. Napkins were thrown down. Hands were heartily shaken. I knew we’d do it! Yes, I knew we’d do it! Jolly good! Uniformed servants bustled around clearing the porcelain plates and crockery. “Would Lord and Lady Chisholm take the Bentley or the Rolls Royce?”

  “No, Lord and Lady Chisholm would be traveling as guests of the American oil man—Mr. Harry Mayweather, but the servants must bring the bags. This was it. They were sure.”

  Sand goggles were located. Parasols were put up. Messages were hastily wired to London, Rome, Paris, New York, and Istanbul—Yes, it has been found. There is no mistake—this is it. Slender gloves were fitted over delicate hands. Pocket watches were briskly examined. A sense of excitement permeated the air as, en-masse, the entourage passed to a collection of antique, highly polished motorcars that were parked beneath nearby tents.

  Doors were slammed. Orders were issued from shadowy figures in the back seats. Caps were straightened by serious chauffeurs. Heavy engines roared to life. Highly polished tires crackled on the sparkling sand. Headlights burned through the desert sun as the antique motorcade drove toward the mountains.

  * * * * *

  Deep within the shadows of the mountain pass, the Arabian sheikh, Al-Sharak Azlukazahum ran his hands across the inscriptions on the doors of the ancient tomb. Of sixty years of age, he wore a thawb and headdress, and he had deep, brown, sun-weathered skin and keen brown eyes.

  Rock-by-rock he removed the last remaining stones from the portal and peered through the aperture into the tomb beyond. Inside all was darkness, all was mystery. Taking a lantern from the wall, he flashed it about—a feast for the eyes, for as the shadows receded, a myriad of Egyptian hieroglyphs were revealed upon the walls, and more importantly, beyond them lay the outline of a doorway, sealed an age ago, that might lead to an inner chamber. Bearing the lantern before him, he ventured within, followed in turn by several of his trusted Arabian servants.

  Chapter 1

  Boxes were arriving outside a new house on Charming Lane and a wooden sign that read, For Sale, now had a large sticker over it that read, Sold. House movers in uniforms were removing the contents of a large white moving truck, coming and going from the back of it, wheeling furniture and carrying boxes. Upon the sidewalk, a large balding man in a mover’s uniform regarded a clipboard bemusedly. "Hey, lady," he said, "it says here that there's only two televisions, but there's four in the back of the truck."

  The lady that he was referring to was Mrs. Katherine Goodfellow—Katie to her friends. She stood on the sidewalk wearing tight-fitting sweatpants and a V-neck sweater that was rolled up to the elbows. Her hair—blond, curly, and stuck on end—would have given people the impression that she was a bedraggled Chihuahua were it not so much in fashion.

  "Wonderful!" she said. She gazed hopelessly at the clipboard. "You see, they're for my husband, Bill. They're not televisions; they're computer monitors. Terribly sorry." Her face adopted a pained expression that seemed to utilize every muscle. She wrung her hands. "He's in the computer business," she said. "You know ... bits and bytes and gigawhatsits. Oh, don't mind me..." She hit the man playfully upon the shoulder. "I'm just like that! In there," she said, pointing to the doorway. "You can put them with the others."

  The moving man shook his head in bemusement and wheeled the heavy boxes down the path toward the front door. He had just reached it when Mrs. Goodfellow yelled, "Charlie! Come and help us get some furniture out!"

  From within the doorway, a boy peered up apprehensively at the sky. He was eleven years old, of medium height, and he had a mop of mousy, brown hair.

  His mother pulled his sister’s brightly colored high chair from the back of the moving truck. "Give me a hand with this!" she said.

  Charlie leapt out onto the pavement. Landing with each foot upon different paving slabs, he froze, looking down at his feet. Then, peering up at the sky suspiciously, he blinked three times.

  The moving man frowned at him. "Out of my way, sonny," he said as he struggled with a cumbersome box. "Strange kid..." he muttered as he carried it into the house.

  Charlie met the gaze of his mother who regarded him critically. "Charlie," she said, "what have I told you about wearing that T-shirt?"

  Charlie picked at his shirt with his fingers. It was bright green and had a repli
ca of Salamanderman on it. Salamanderman was Charlie's favorite superhero and a regular feature of children's breakfast time TV. He had suction pads on his feet and he could catch criminals with his tongue. "I told you to put that T-shirt in the laundry basket," said his mother, "it's filthy!"

  Charlie supposed that she must mean the baked bean stains just beneath Salamanerman's arm. Or perhaps she meant the oil stains beside Salamanderman's head—he had got those while fixing his bike a couple of days ago.

  "Charlie," she said, "don't just stand there staring at yourself. Do something useful. Take this high chair inside. Your sister can't carry this on her own, you know."

  Charlie took the bright, pink contraption from her. He didn't suppose that his sister could carry it on her own since she was only fifteen months old. In fact, there wasn't much she could do except toddle about. As Charlie carried the high chair into the house, a thought occurred to him.

  "Can I go out on my bike?" he asked.

  "No!" said his mother, wrestling a disjointed lamp that fell upon her neck like a vampire. "Oh, alright! It'll get you out of the way. Where is your father?"

  "Here I am, lovey!" Mr. Goodfellow bound from the doorway—a gangly, middle-aged, balding man in a jogging suit. "Don't try to lift that, deary!" He ran to his wife's aid. "You'll give yourself a hernia or a slipped disc. Think of the medical bills!" Then, noticing Charlie wheeling his bike across the lawn, he frowned. "Where are you going?"

  "For a ride," said Charlie. "Mom said that I could."

  Mr. Goodfellow glanced anxiously back at his wife who was now being attacked by a python-like garden hose. "OK," he said, "but wear your bicycle helmet, don't be away too long, and don't talk to strangers." His father glanced about suspiciously. "We don't know this neighborhood yet... You don't know what kind of weirdo's might be about."

  Charlie rolled his eyes.

  "And don't roll your eyes!" said Mr. Goodfellow as he disentangled his wife. "It happens all the time, y' know—kids get taken and then—"

  His words trailed off. Charlie couldn't hear him anymore. He had strapped on his bicycle helmet and was riding away. He changed through the gears. First... Second... Third... He felt the familiar clunk as the chain locked into place, and the resistance of the pedals as his feet pushed against them. Now that he was out on the road, he could pick up speed.

  For the first time he was scoping out his new neighborhood. Although Charlie's family had just moved a couple of miles and he could still attend the same school, this neighborhood was very different from the one that they used to live in. It had large houses with basketball hoops and expensive cars in the driveways with their names in gold letters upon the back of them. These houses had immaculately trimmed lawns with water sprinklers and brightly colored flags outside their doors—flags that changed with the seasons. It was the Pleasant Valley Estates—one of the wealthier parts of the city of Pleasant Valley. "A neighborhood for middle to upper income professionals," his father had said. "Not just anyone can live here, you know. You have to be in a certain income bracket."

  Charlie wasn't sure what income bracket meant, but he thought that it had something to do with how much money you earned. These houses looked expensive. They were on streets with names like Charming Lane, Pleasant Drive, or Wisteria Way. Charlie thought that they just sounded like fancy names made up by advertising people, for folks who wanted to say things like, "Oh yes, you can visit us anytime...The address? Charming Lane..."

  It made Charlie want to puke his guts up.

  He wheelied off the curb and onto the street. He loved being on his bike. It was a bit like flying. You could go where you wanted and get away from everyone else. If people asked you where you were going, you just told them that you were going for a ride—you didn't have to tell them where you were going.

  Charlie glided down the street. If he remembered correctly, his mom had said that there was some kind of high class senior housing estate nearby—somewhere that rich old folks bought houses close together so that they could rely on one another and have someone to talk to. His dad had said that it gave stability to a neighborhood to have seniors nearby, and anyway, there was a cemetery next door, so the old folks didn't have far to go when they popped off.

  Popped off, thought Charlie. His dad was always using funny expressions like popped off. Computer geeks had loads of funny words like gigabyte, terabyte, and hard disk drive. It was like they had their own language sometimes. Every month, his dad would host a group at their house, for people who liked to disassemble computers and put them back together again.

  Freaks and Geeks, his mother called it.

  His father described it differently, "It is intelligent discussion and practical advice," he had said, "on the inner workings of the personal computer, with a particular emphasis on CPUs and memory."

  "Freaks and Geeks!" his mom would say again, and then they'd get into an argument about how the long-haired, leather-jacketed one always parked his motorbike too close to her flower beds, or how the anxious, spectacled one would nervously pull out his hair, leaving strands of it on the couch—which inevitably the cat would eat and later throw up in a hairball.

  "Fifi doesn't like it!" his mother would say.

  His dad was alright, thought Charlie, except that he was a bit obsessed with status, computers, and safety. Other than that there was no problem. Charlie panted as he cycled up a hill between fallow fields and partially constructed timber-framed houses. Over the crest of the hill, he was freewheeling down a narrow road. Upon either side lay overgrown verges, a ramshackle stone wall, and deep dark woods—well tended yet gloomy and desolate somehow, as if no one were allowed to go there. Charlie flew along with the wind in his hair. Squeezing the brakes, he skidded back tire first to a halt, and sat there amazed in a whelter of dust and pebbles. Before him rose black, iron gothic gates. Easily twenty feet high, they were flanked by moss-eaten stone pillars. At their summit were lichen-garbed sculptures of recoiling mythical creatures, and upon the gates hung a weatherworn bronze sign. What did it say? It was so hard to tell because it was so dirty. Charlie rubbed it with the back of his sleeve. Something about...The Realm of something or other? And there was some kind of regal crest, some runes, and what might have been a date.

  Leaning upon his handlebars, Charlie reflected. This must be what his dad had spoken about, he thought. The fancy housing development where the old folks lived. But where were they? Peering through the bars of the gate, all that he could see was a bracken track that snaked off through the gloomy woods. To where, he could only guess; the thick forest canopy blocked out most of the light. One thing was clear though; there had been people here—there were foot marks on the ground.

  "What do you want here?"

  Startled, Charlie whirled around. Eyes wide, he beheld a man standing in front of him; of about sixty years of age, he had shoulder-length hair flecked with silver. He was wearing a padded jerkin, breeches, and a damp and discolored sackcloth smock. He had leather boots, the strangest French-looking, black, brimmed hat, dirty skin, and craggy eyes, which regarded Charlie with deep suspicion.

  Charlie clutched the handlebars, knuckles white.

  "What? Me? Uh... nothing. I didn't do anything..." he said.

  The old man's mouth mottled. His dark eyes flicked Charlie suspiciously up and down. With an ominous shing of steel, he drew a black-steel longknife. "What are you doing here? Who sent you?" he asked.

  Charlie regarded the antique blade with wide eyed amazement.

  "Nothing. I swear."

  "I've got a good mind to–"

  And that's when a mournful wailing rushed through the treetops. A whirlwind arose from all around them. A preternatural thing, it scurried dead leaves in a mmadcap, capering dance.

  Glancing about startled, Charlie saw that the trees were now filled with glossy black crows, cawing mechanically.

  The stranger crouched. Casting suspicious eyes about, he regarded the crows with suspicion. Then he took Charlie by the
lapels and lifted him to his resentful face.

  "You're not to come here again," he snarled. "Understand me? If you do there'll be hell to pay. Now, go!"

  He threw Charlie down, and no further warning was needed. Charlie leapt upon the bike and pedaled like fury until he was just a speck in the distance.

  Once he had gone, the stranger ducked back into the shadows and disappeared.

  Only the crows were left, watching the road. Cawing plaintively, they sprung from the treetops and winged in the direction that Charlie had gone.

  Chapter 2

  By the time Charlie got home, the sun was sinking, painting the sky in hues of red and burnt umber. His father was standing on the doorstep, carrying in the last of the furniture.

  "What have you been up to?" he asked, struggling beneath the weight of a giant TV. "I told you not to be away too long."

  "Nothing," said Charlie, propping up his bike in the garage and regarding the sky worriedly. "Sorry, I forgot. What's for dinner?" And with that, he nervously ducked inside.

  "Forgot?" said his dad, "Forgot?" Tutting, he threw back lank black hair that fell across his eyes. "What's got into you? You look like you've seen a ghost."

  Dinner was Chinese takeout that Charlie’s parents had ordered from a place called Moon Sung, down the street. They ate it at the table in their new kitchen, in an alcove amongst the towering boxes. The food was in little cartons upon the table, alongside his father's assorted computer junk. There was a carton of egg-fried rice and then there was a tray of semi-conductors. Beside that sat a carton of chicken chow mein aside a tub of memory chips.

  "Where did you go?" Charlie’s dad asked him as he sat down.

  Charlie thought about the answer for a moment and decided that he'd better not tell his dad about the afternoon encounter. "Just up to the old folk's houses over the hill," he said. "Not far."

  His father glanced at him warily. Gesturing with a chopstick, he said, "Be careful of strangers, Charlie. There are a lot of wierdos about."